Did this mean that they were going back to their camp? And that the coast was clear for that pressing work I had to do. Five minutes, I calculated, would suffice for my purpose.
I kept a sharp eye open for Clubfoot. Here he came, the eighth in the party, hobbling along in the rear, with set face, grim and silent. The line halted for a moment. The man in front of Clubfoot, a small, dark man, doffed his panama to sponge his face. To my amazement it was Custrin.... Custrin, whom I had last seen, at the side of Marjorie Garth, standing at the head of the Naomi's ladder waving us farewell as the launch took us ashore....
Now I had the solution of something that had greatly puzzled me—Clubfoot's exact knowledge of where I kept the cipher message, his allusion to my "Government survey work" on Cock Island. Then Custrin was one of El Cojo's spies! With a little shiver I thought of that hocussed drink. What would have been my fate that night but for the merciful intervention of Providence? I could make a pretty shrewd guess. They would have found me insensible in my berth and Custrin gone in the morning—in one of the ship's boats. I wondered vaguely what had become of the doctor whose papers he must have appropriated....
The voices had died away now and Clubfoot, the last of the line, had disappeared from my sight. I had counted eight in the party. All, therefore, seemed to have passed. Softly I began to wriggle myself forward....
I reached the path which the party had followed. It was a well-marked track through the forest. The trees were not so dense here, and above my head I caught at intervals a glimpse of dazzling blue sky. The sun was very hot.
Quietly and quickly I went down the track, heading for the direction from which Clubfoot and his men had come. I went warily, bitterly conscious of my defenceless state. But I met no one and presently I stood on the edge of the clearing, the grave of the Unknown below me.
The clearing was all a-quiver with heat; gorgeous-hued butterflies danced from bush to bush amid flaming flowers; the drone of insects was in the air. I skirted the edge of the basin, then silently dropped down to the grave.
I took out the little mirror and gave it a good rub-up with my handkerchief. Then, going down on my knees, I laid it on the grave as I had originally found it—face upwards with the holes in the frame aligned with the holes in the timber baulk beneath. With my compass I took my bearing of 27 degrees, adjusted the mirror's position to the line it gave and then raised the glass on its base until it stood, as far as one might reckon by the eye, at an angle of 85 degrees from the horizontal.
I looked at my watch. It marked five minutes to twelve.
A gleaming speck of light flamed on the mirror's polished surface as it caught the sun, danced on fern and bush and boulder as I raised the glass and then, as I steadied it, came tremulously to rest on the topmost pinnacle of that terraced rock which Garth and I had climbed on the previous afternoon.